Keskustelujen arkisto

On Jan 18, 5:47pm, Kristian Thougaard Pedersen wrote:

> This story was my first encounter with Mexican jumping
> beans, by the way. Do they REALLY jump...?
>
Yes, they do! They're seeds of a Mexican plant with an
insect larva inside. The movement of the larva inside
causes the seed to seem to jump. The movement is real,
and even startling, though exaggerated in cartoons.

--Dwight Decker

GARY LEACH:

> "Toyland" was one of those weird stories that seemed to get manhandled
> more than was usual for Barks' material (being a giveaway story probably
> had something to do with that). In the black and white CBL, the
> unBarksian art touches were on the art as Western sent it to us (I don't
> have the actual Firestone giveaway comic to hand, so I don't know if it
> was actually published that way. Can anyone else shed light on that?)

What attracted my attention is that the unBarksian art only seems to
change facial expressions which might have been too negative the way
Barks drew them.

I've tried to find all the unBarksian art in the story (as published in
the b/w CBL) and these are the panels I've found: Panels (2.4?), 2.8,
5.8, 6.4, 6.6 and 6.8. One thing that attracted my attention was that
the changes always seem to make a facial expression more positive.

Some examples:

Panel 2.8. The unBarksian art makes the smile on Donald's face look
forced. If you look at the rest of his face, it is very well possible
that Barks didn't have Donald smiling at all in his original art.

Panel 5.8. You can see lines on the neck of Donald. This might mean that
Donald was blushing in the original art and that the editors removed the
original face, but forgot (or didn't care) to remove the lines still being
in Donald's neck. (*)

Panel 6.6. You can still see a line under the - for the reader - right
eye of the nephew. If you look at the eyes and the action of the panel,
it might be very possible that the nephew had a very mean look. The line
under the nephew's eye would be a left-over of that.

So, if the b/w version of the Carl Barks Library is the very same as the
version printed in the Firestone Giveaway, this would mean that the story
was censored before it's first printing.

Can someone please check this?

The story itself is mostly a collection of innocent slapstick with the
nephews and Donald being on a very friendly base. When Barks got the
script for this story, it might be that he thought it was too sweet and
so he started too add some 'Barksian action' to a certain level (even
in his version the story stays rather sweet).

Maybe the editors didn't want to take the risk that Firestone wouldn't
approve their stories (something they told Barks before he did his
rewriting and the art) and for this reason - even though they accepted
Barks' somewhat wilder (but careful) rewriting of the story - they didn't
want to take any risk and softened some of the Duck's expressions?

If this all is true, we may be very glad that we still have panel 4.7
the way Barks drew it.

(*) For the people who don't see what I mean with lines in relation to
blushing, check out the last page of the story (panel 8.5) or the second
page of WDC 111 <love letters>.

Greetings,

--- Daniel

"Hooray! I'm cured! My mind doesn't hurt anymore!"

The Mad Musician, OG 11 --- Carl Barks

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On Jan 19, 10:39am, Alipio d'Oliveira Coelho wrote:
> Subject: Where is Duckburg?

> I allways think Duckburg was in California. But there are a lot of
> stories in Duckburg with snow!! (Donald Duck in: Duck out of Luck -
WDCS
> 294; DD in: Statues of Limitations - WDCS 196; DD in: Rip van Donald
- WDCS
> 112, etc.). Does snow in California?
>
Yes. California is a very big state, and stretches a great
distance from north to south, so there are a number of
different climate zones. In southern California, where
Los Angeles is, snow is pretty rare, though you can see
it in the higher elevations of the mountains surrounding LA.
I think Barks tended to place Duckburg wherever he thought
it would make a good story. There are stories where Duckburg
has palm trees, for instance (well, at least one).

--Dwight Decker

HARRY:
>The dates when Barks delivered the stories to his editor are also
>in Michael Barrier's book (CB and the Art of the Comic Book). Are
>these the dates you are talking about?

Sounds like the same dates. Haven't read CB and the Art of the
Comic Book yet, unfortunately.

ALIPIO:
>I allways think Duckburg was in California. But there are a lot of
>stories in Duckburg with snow!! (Donald Duck in: Duck out of Luck
>- WDCS 294; DD in: Statues of Limitations - WDCS 196; DD in: Rip
>van Donald - WDCS 112, etc.). Does snow in California?

Yes, it does snow in certain parts of California.

See ya later.

Eric

In a message dated 97-01-19 15:00:24 EST, you write:

<< I allways think Duckburg was in California. But there are a lot of
stories in Duckburg with snow!! (Donald Duck in: Duck out of Luck - WDCS
294; DD in: Statues of Limitations - WDCS 196; DD in: Rip van Donald - WDCS
112, etc.). Does snow in California?

Alipio Coelho >>

In the Mountains near LA, I believe they get snow.

JAKOB SOEDERBAUM

[About the CBL]
>> Let's say that the CBL prints about 99 percent of Barks' original
art,
> > just to give an idea.

> I don't have the complete collection, but I heard that it's only *90%* of
> the Library that is Barks original art. There's really much redrawn (and/or
> censored)...

DISCLAIMER: The following is *not* an attack on anyone -- it's just my
opinion, and I certainly won't think anyone who disagrees with me is a
lousy excuse for a human being. I'll think you're *wrong*, but what the
heck -- it's a well-known fact that I'm always right (in my own twisted
mind, anyway).

I was closely involved in putting together the original CBL (my name's
in the books, anyway, with a whole bunch of changing job titles), but I
certainly don't remember the percentage of "original" to "redrawn" art.

What I do remember is that we used original proofs whenever we could get
them, and that was almost all of the time. The exceptions were some of
the banned stories like "Darkest Africa" (where Disney had ordered all
the proofs destroyed years earlier), or a story like the ten-pager from
WDC&S 70 (the Smugsnorkle Squatty story). In the latter case, Western
Publishing had *thrown away* a half-page of artwork when the story was
reprinted in WDC&S 305, so we were forced to shoot from the original
comic (filtering out the color), and retouch what was left -- in
essence, "redrawing" it the same way Jippes "redrew" "Darkest Africa."
(And by the way, did anyone notice that "new" half-page?)

Other "non-original" pages in the CBL were censored pages we restored to
stories (like "Back to the Klondike") -- the idea was to present the
stories as Barks had intended. That's why some unpublished Barks pages
were *not* put back into stories (the "ray-that-turns-living-
things-into-stone" story from US 8, for example) -- Barks himself had
removed them so their inclusion would have been contrary to his intent.

But you know what? If you want to get anal about it, EVERY SINGLE PAGE
OF BARKS ART IN THE CBL WAS RETOUCHED. In fact, my first job at Another
Rainbow involved using a brush and a bottle of white-out to remove flaws
on the proofs. And a lot of times, we had to touch up (redraw) the lines
to keep them from disappearing in printing. But so what?

I'm very proud that I was part of putting together the CBL; proud
because we went to a lot of trouble to preserve Barks' life's work as
faithfully as possible. Naturally, it could not be an exact duplication
of exactly what Barks drew, given Disney censorship ("Donald Duck's Atom
Bomb", for example) and lousy or missing proofs in some cases.

I can certainly understand people being disappointed at not getting a
banned story in it's original form. But I have a hard time understanding
complaints about "redrawn" art. When everything important (like the
story, the layout, the position of the character, the facial
expressions, etc. etc.) is original, and the only change is the exact
thickness of a line a fraction of a millimeter long, what's the problem?

But for those of you who think it *is* a problem, all I can say is that
you really should step back and look at the forest. It's a much more
pleasant view than that knothole on the the third tree to the left that
you've got your nose buried in.

> BYRON:

> Ya big palooka! WHY ON EARTH DIDN'T YOU SHOW UP AS PROMISED AT SVENSKA
> MAESSAN IN THE END OF OCTOBER???!!!! I bought *expensive* tickets to go
> there and see you, but there were no Byron to be seen anywhere!! I heard
> from someone you had decided against coming after all! I *demand* a *good*
> explanation for this!

The problem was, *I* promised *nothing*! I found out only *after* the
program book was printed that I was listed as a guest. In fact, I
was only invited to attend a couple of weeks before the fair (an
oversight, I was assured), and at that point I had other things on my
schedule that made attending impossible. So I declined the invitation.

But I'm certainly flattered that you went all that way to see li'l ol'
me! And I don't believe it for one second!

-- Byron "I just like to *read* a good comic book story" Erickson